Since networking and collaborating with colleagues can have a significant impact on our professional lives, I wanted to follow-up on my previous post with highlights of a few groups within LinkedIn, FaceBook and Twitter that may assist Canadian pharmaceutical professionals to find and network with one another. Note that some of these groups offer greater networking opportunities than others, but I will leave it to you to check them out and decide which is best for you.

GIVEAWAY: In the spirit of networking and sharing, I have saved 6 Google Wave invitations to share with 6 Canadian pharma colleagues (client or agency, but must be involved in the Canadian pharmaceutical industry). Google Wave is a collaborative online tool, which at the moment is only available to those who are invited by somebody already on the network. How to enter this giveaway contest? Write a comment on this post. Since I only have 6 invitations left, if more than 6 people write a comment, then we’ll have to make it a draw in which case everybody who writes a comment will be given a number (ie. the 1st to write a post is assigned the number ‘1’, and so on) and then will be randomly selected with the use of the random number generator Random.org. The monetary value of this giveaway: a big, fat $0.00 . So why am I bothering? The intent is to share this tool with others who truly want to collaborate with their colleagues online. What better way to find out who these people are than to just ask them to ‘raise their hand’ online. Plus, once you are on Google Wave, then you get a bunch of invitations to send to your friends as well. What a great way to connect, share and collaborate with one another. Deadline is Sunday December 13th, 11:59 pm. Draw (if required depending on number of comments) and invitations will take place on Monday December 14th.

Twitter:About a month ago, Twitter added a new “list” feature. As part of these lists, Twitter users (tweeps) can select certain people that they are following as part of their lists and make the lists public. You can give a name to the list, so tweeps who see your list will have an idea what it is about. I have put together a ‘Canadian Pharma’ list that you may wish to peruse or follow.

The development of this list is ongoing as I find new people who meet the criteria and also as Canadian pharma folks join Twitter. If you work in the Canadian pharma industry and are on Twitter but not on my list, please make sure to send me your username and I will add you to it.

Here are a few resources to help you find your Canadian pharma colleagues on Twitter:

1) To find people based on their bio, you can use TweepSearch.com and insert the keywords that you are looking for. This system is helpful, but not perfect because the search results will depend on the words used in people’s bio. So if you are on Twitter and want to be found and recognized for certain keywords (ie. ‘pharma marketing’), make sure that they are part of your bio… and this includes your location too. If somebody is searching for a ‘pharma marketing’ tweep in Canada, but your location is left blank, you will not show up as part of their search.

2) To find people based on the content of the posts that they publish (tweets), you can either do a search directly in Twitter or use one of many search engines that track tweets. I like to use IceRocket.com and WeFollow.com for this purpose, but there are many other sites that provide a similar type of search at no cost.

Although this is not a Canadian-specific resource, you might be interested in following pharma companies on Twitter. If so, you can start by checking out Ignite Health’s dashboard. In fact, the cool thing about this dashboard is that even if you are not on Twitter, you can still follow the more recent posts that are written by these pharma companies directly from the dashboard.

————————————————

This is just a sample of the many groups that may be of interest to a Canadian pharmaceutical professional. There is also a plethora of social networks with an international focus that might offer excellent networking opportunities with both Canadian and international colleagues (for example, just search “pharma” for LinkedIn groups and the list goes on and on).

If you know of other Canadian groups that were not mentioned in this post, but you think that Canadian pharma professionals would be able to connect and collaborate with each other by joining them, please leave a comment with the name and URL for the group. And remember that your comment will be considered as an entry in the Google Wave invitation giveaway contest (as described above).